Recent Comments

About

Owner of PageF30.com.
Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mithradates
Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Here's a story worth reading from NPR about Spanish book sales in the United States, where the language itself makes up 12% of the population but in terms of book sales just 4%. It begins by addressing that one might be tempted to make the assumption that this is simply just an untapped market, but the issue is more complicated than that, mostly having to do with 1) reading habits for English vs. Spanish speakers, and 2) the fact that English in the US is more culturally unified than Spanish, and so a book that might be liked by an Ecuadorian might not necessarily appeal to a Mexican, or vice versa, or some other combination.